Generally, spot air-conditioners for localized air cooling have been used to improve working environment of various manufacturing facilities. As disclosed in Japanese Utility Model Application Laying Open Gazette No. 61-101333, a typical spot air-conditioner is so constructed that a refrigerant circuit including a compressor, a condenser, an evaporator and an expansion mechanism, as well as a fan for condensation and a fan for evaporation are accommodated in a housing mounted on a wagon. With the above construction, the conventional spot air-conditioner blows off cooled-air which is heat-exchanged by the evaporator toward human operators. The cooled air is blown off from a blow-off duct connected with the upper portion of the housing.
The blow-off duct is connected with a swing cylinder. This swing cylinder is supported on the housing by means of a pin secured in the direction of diameter thereof. And a motor is connected with the swing cylinder by a link mechanism. The blow-off duct is swung by the activation of the motor to ensure an extensive air cooling.
In the above spot air-conditioner, the motor is driven or halted by means of a swing switch, thereby selecting a stationary mode or swing mode of the blow-off duct.
However, the problem is that this type of spot air-conditioner does not consider probable movement of operators, i.e. target persons for air conditioning. Therefore, if an operator leaves his position, the air-conditioning in the stationary mode results in the cooled air blown off to the unnecessary direction. Accordingly, the air conditioning becomes wasteful and desirable comfortableness cannot be achieved. In addition, the air-conditioning in the swing mode results in only the intermittent exposure of an operator to cooled air since the direction of cooled air varies regardless of the movement of the operator. Therefore, again sufficient comfortableness cannot be obtained. Considering that the optimum air conditioning is achieved in spot air-conditioners when the air-conditioner blows off cooled air directly toward operators, the intermittent exposure to cooled air cannot improve comfortableness in working environment.
It is thus an object of the present invention to provide a spot air-conditioner which controls a blow-off duct so as to keep track of the movement of a target person to be air-conditioned by detecting the presence of the human body with human body detection means, thereby improving comfortableness of air conditioning.